Garment hangers, especially wire hangers, are bulky, are unusally shaped and present an entanglement problem when being stored. This is particularly true when the hangers are not stored in a hanging position. Such hangers when collected in a box or other similar storage containers generally become entangled and before being used usually require that the entangled hangers must be separated and maintained in a separated state before an individual hanger can be used. This necessitates generally that an individual has to use both hands to extract a single hanger from the container in which such hangers are being stored.
Heretofore, this entanglement problem has been recognized in the prior art and several different containers have been proposed to solve this problem. These prior art containers maintain the hangers, such as wire hangers, so that individual hangers can be easily removed conveniently and separately for use when needed, for example, in a home laundry.
Once such prior art container is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,987,898 which issued to W. B. Crane on Oct. 26, 1976 disclosing an open-ended container for depositing garment hangers. However, the garment stacking container is large and cumbersome and not generally useful in a home environment. Another solution offered by the prior art to solve this hanger storage problem is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,711,383 which issued to James E. Jenkins on Dec. 8, 1987 disclosing a clothes hanger carrier and storage container. This container is similar to the Crane container noted hereinbefore but of a smaller size and can easily be carried by a housewife, when preparing to do home laundry. One of the problems with both of these containers is that each of them is open at the top. Should the container be dropped or turned over, the hangers positioned therein could easily fall out of the containers and thereby become entangled.
Another solution offered by the prior art to solve this storage entanglement problem is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,438 issuing to Rexford L. Hicks on Feb. 2, 1988 disclosing an organizer container for garment hangers. This Hicks container allows vertical storage of hangers and maintains the hangers separately between ribbed sections of the container. This container likewise is open at its upper portion, and has some of the deficiencies of the other prior art containers. Therefore, it would be an advance in the art to provide a substantially closed container for garment hangers which would allow the hangers to be inserted into the container, stored and safely retained irrespective of the positing of the container in an unentangled state and subsequently easily removed for use when needed.